Uptown Apartments

We lived here for almost three years, in both buildings. For the most part we really enjoyed this place. The neighborhood is great and the price was reasonable at the time. There were many small nuisances that led to us breaking our lease. I’ve hesitated on writing a review because overall we don’t regret living here but there are a few things I wish I knew before moving in.
RED BUILDING:
The boiler was either on full blast or off and controlled by the landlord so the only regulation was opening windows. The bathroom was a sauna even with keeping the one window open. However, our electricity bill was super low. The water in the kitchen sink was yellow (landlord said due to «old pipes») but not in the bathroom. We were in a stairway unit so traffic up and down the stairs was extremely noisy. We didn’t really care except when we’d come back to a rude note on our door about how loud we were due to the echo from the stairs (from the neighbor who played video games all night). For better or worse, our landlord had a hands-​off approach to these situations. We eventually transferred from our studio in the red building to a 1 bedroom in the white building and the transfer process was pretty seamless.
WHITE BUILDING:
Aesthetically we loved this place. The layouts wasted a lot of square footage but that seems standard in a lot of old places. We had a unit with a lot of windows because we were over Zupan’s lot, which made the natural lighting and the french doors to the bedroom dreamy. However, because we were on the outside wall we had to deal with the annoyance of living next to a commercial lot. This is the «What I wish I knew» part:
— The trucks unload early in the morning. Our landlord did tell us this before we transferred to this unit but he didn’t tell us the extent of it. ALL NIGHT LONG. From before we went to bed to after I got up to leave for work. Thankfully we were not light sleepers and adjusted. Guests hated it.
— There was frequent loud cleaning of the parking lot at night & NO NOTICE to shut windows when they power-​washed our building at 11pm.
— People smoke next to the building. Pacific Northwest = no AC so we would have fans in our windows. The moment someone lit up our entire apartment was filled with second hand smoke.
— Occasionally you get homeless people sleeping on the outside wall that holler and sing to themselves at night so you have to either deal with it or call the Police non-​emergency number.
— There was ZERO hot water pressure in our kitchen. We were told there was no way to get more pressure. It also took about 15 min of running the hot water for it to get beyond bath water temp which is super wasteful.
— The bathroom shower pressure would flicker and then go to SCALDING hot every few minutes, giving you just a split second to get out of the way and save yourself. This happened any time of any day. We were also told there was nothing that could be done.
— We had a neighbor who smoked weed, and to each their own, but we didn’t want our apartment filled with it. Our landlord’s response was to tell US to figure out who it was. No thanks! Not my job!
— Every winter half of the walls in our apartment would break out into surface mold. When we told our landlord he gave us a bottle of Tilex and said to just keep spraying it down and keep air circulating. So the option was either breathe surface mold or cleaning fumes. He told us it was just a part of living in the northwest and not getting enough sunlight on the exterior wall. Two years/​apartments/​neighborhoods later we’ve had zero mold issues. When we moved out he made sure he got his Tilex bottle back…
— We had a lot of «band aid» repairs that had to have repeat fixes. One of which WE got billed $ 340 for because after two years of our landlord pulling THICK COARSE BLACK hair out of the sink drain (we are two fine haired blondes) he told us we were causing it. He told us to unclog it, which we did, messing up the prior band-​aid fix and he had to hire a plumber who knocked a massive hole in the wall which caused the need for a wall repair, all of which we had to pay for. This was the tipping point which caused us to break our lease.
— After a year, our landlord asked us to become «deputies» so that we could help in an emergency if he was away (no resident keys obviously). His «one or two times a year and you can always say no» turned into frequent trips, being across town and passive aggressive guilt trips when we said that we couldn’t do it and that he had made plans before verifying we were going to be around.
PARKING:
— The parking lot across the street (which you can pay to park in) gets re-​paved and repainted without warning and they won’t let you park in the other half because it’s retail. Or they just rope off the part you’re parked in and block you in. We’ve also had to fight tickets even though we had the correct parking pass up which is a waste of my time, and had a smashed in window (which could happen anywhere).